The present invention relates to an integrated optical waveguide.
Conventional integrated optical waveguides have a core and/or sheath made of polymers. However, to use a waveguide of this type in optical telecommunications, the waveguide must have high transparency and low attenuation in the two known optical windows on the 1300 nm and 1550 nm wave bands.
Due to absorption caused by excited molecular harmonics, however, the Cxe2x80x94H and Oxe2x80x94H groups contained in many polymers produce substantial, unwanted optical attenuation in conventional optical waveguides on these wave bands.
The use of Teflon AF 1600, which is manufactured and sold by DuPont, Specialty Polymers, P.O. Box 80713, Wilmington, Del., 19880, USA, as the upper buffer for waveguides is described in N. Keil, H. Yao and C. Zawadzki, xe2x80x9cA Novel Type of 2xc3x972 Digital Optical Switch Realized by Polymer Waveguide Technologyxe2x80x9d 1996, ECOC Oslo.
An integrated optical waveguide according to an example embodiment of the present invention has the advantage that the use of fully fluorinated fluorocarbon materials can easily and economically realize highly transparent optical waveguides with very low attenuation in the windows around 1300 nm and 1550 nm that are so important for optical telecommunications.
Complete replacement of light-weight hydrogen atoms with the heavier fluorine achieves a much lower optical attenuation in these materials, compared to conventional polymers, making the optical waveguides according to the example embodiment of the present invention extremely suitable for transmitting information in optical telecommunications.
The core and sheath of the optical waveguide are each very advantageously made of a fully fluorinated Teflon material, for which purpose the Teflon AF 1600 and Teflon AF 2400 materials are especially suitable and, in addition, mix well and are easy to process. As a result, both the core and the, sheath of the optical waveguide can be advantageously composed of a mixture of fully fluorinated Teflon materials. To avoid intensity losses, the refractive index of the core is higher than the refractive index of the sheath.